NOCSL ignores General Assembly decision

The National Olympic Committee of Sri Lanka has ignored decisions of its supreme governing body—the General Assembly (GA)—by not calling for an Executive Committee Meeting as agreed at the GA held on November 9.

The membership had unanimously agreed to an Executive Committee meeting within 14 days of the recent GA. But no notice has so far been given. The NOC constitution requires seven days of notice before an Executive Committee Meeting.

Attempts to contact SecretaryGeneral Maxwell de Silva by the Sunday Times were futile as he did not answer his mobile phone. With the election date fixed for January 9 next year, the Executive Committee (defunct since 2013) was to discuss several matters including the appointment of the Election Commission.

Meanwhile, an email exchange between ExCo member Rohan Fernando and Mr de Silva shows that the latter awaits IOC approval of its newly adopted constitution to move forward. “As you’ll [sic] aware that we are part of the Olympic Movement and THE CONSTITUTION becomes operational [sic] only after it is approved by them and not otherwise. I await IOC approval to move forward and we will certainly follow IOC guidelines and shall keep you posted,” de Silva wrote in response to an email sent by Fernando.

However, in his reply, Fernando, quoting an earlier correspondence IOC had with NOCSL, states that the constitution becomes operational once approved by the General Assembly.

“As concerns [sic] the operationalisation of the NOC Constitution, it will be useful to examine the comments of Mr Jerome Poivey, IOC International Relations Director, in the email dated 5 April 2017, addressed to President NOCSL and to you, with copies to Mr Haider of OCA and to Deva (Henry),” Fernando writes.

IOC wrote in April: “In addition, we assume that the draft has already been discussed with your NOC Executive Board and NOC membership (but not done by you until 25 October 2017, after over 6 months had elapsed). However, in all cases, we will request that you circulate the final draft to all members, before you convene formally, the Extraordinary General Assembly of your NOC, which will have to consider and adopt the revised Constitution." “By this, the IOC accepts that it is the General Assembly, which is the Supreme Governing Body of the NOCSL, which has to adopt the revised Constitution. And this was done and adopted without any division by the General Assembly on 9 November 2017. “Furthermore, Article 29 - Final Provisions, .3 of the new Constitution adopted by the General Assembly on 9 November 2017, categorically states thus. “The present Constitution shall become effective once adopted by the General Assembly of the Committee and shall replace and supersede any other previous Constitutions of the Committee" Fernando was part of the NOCSL team which attended the deliberation in Lausanne in 2013 on this very issue and confident that IOC will not object to decisions made by the supreme sovereign body of the NOCSL, unless it is in violation of the "Olympic Charter".

“To our knowledge, there is absolutely no violation of the "Olympic Charter" in the newly adopted Constitution. The only violation of the "Olympic Charter" we can infer are actions that have not respected the principles of good governance involving transparency and accountability that have been widely commented in the mass media recently,” Fernando writes further.

“…we quite appreciate your sharing the newly approved Constitution with the IOC, but, that should not preclude you from moving forward and following up on the actions to call a meeting of the Executive Board, as approved by the General Assembly on 9 November 2017, whilst giving adequate notice as prescribed in the Constitution, when convening Executive Board Meetings. As such, we request you to please take the necessary action as soon as possible to respect the decision of the General Assembly to call a meeting of the Executive Board within the two weeks from 09 November 2017.

Fernando has also requested the General Secretary to share all his correspondence with membership including the covering letter and the copy of the newly adopted constitution to maintain transparency

“….we shall greatly appreciate your sharing the covering letter you had sent to the IOC, along with the newly adopted Constitution to maintain transparency in your actions. We on our part shall share the copies of our correspondence with you, with the IOC and OCA, in order to ensure transparency in dealing with a subject that concerns the full membership of the NOCSL.